Comments

After doing some googling, I realized that it’s really hard to find that coin vanish. Although I don’t want to necessarily expose something, here’s the thing they were talking about:
You say that you’re going to make a coin vanish, but then you accidentally drop it on the floor. The coin should be about a foot straight in front of your foot. When you reach to pick it up, your hand covers it, and during the grabbing action, you slide it underneath your foot. Then, you come back up, pretending to hold the coin, you pretend to place it in your other hand, and then you show that the coin completely vanished. It’s really easy once you practice it for about five minutes; just make sure that your hand stays away from your foot and that you use your fingers to shoot the coin back, or else it can be obvious. The funny thing about this vanish is that it fools people better than really difficult sleight of hand vanishes.

I dont know what that last trick. But as an amateur magician since 10, I LOVE everything that was said about playing the role of a magician. I never thought about how much we have to think about how to be ‘normal’. You have to know normal body language to know how to fake everything.

Also, the freestyle way of magic at the end. How we all have the ingredients to make even more magic. I always seem to find that when I just fiddle with the sleights I have, I have one of those “a-ha” moments and later on find that, while it definitely isnt anything new or ground breaking, it’s so cool to find that others have found the exact same thing I reached in my explorations.

The story about slipping a card into Obama’s pocket is the craziest thing ever. Ever. Like, how the news cycle hasn’t picked this up is beyond me — he got a trick card pass the secret service!!! Totally nuts.

Love the magic stuff. It was interesting to hear more from this guy since I see his face all over tv.

In other news, I do enjoy these podcasts, but Pete is so sex obsessed that it creeps into every single conversation and I can’t help but roll my eyes. I’ve noticed his monologues also seriously lean that way. Kinda overkill. Anything else to talk about, Petey?

Everyone should know Derren Brown, definitely one of the most intriguing people out there. I feel like not many North Americans don’t know him.
Luckily in Australia his old programs have been getting aired on free-to-air recently. For those uninitiated I recommend ‘Derren Brown: The Heist’ where he unwittingly brainwashes a group of people who believe they’re attending a motivational workshop but are actually being groomed to rob an armored vehicle.

Great episode as usual. Really love hearing about magic. Does anyone have a link to the trick they were doing at the end? Everything I Google just turns up stuff about the French drop. I really want to know wtf was going on.

If Pete really wants to talk to a master magician and finally learn a bit about skepticism, he should really interview James Randi, aka The Amazing Randi. He’s an excellent magician, as well as a rationalist and debunker of hucksters.